Comedy Troupe Makes It Up As It Goes

Campaign '92 is shaping up nicely for Chicago City Limits, the improvisational comedy group that has been based in New York City for the last decade.

True, Ross Perot dropped out of the race, dealing a severe comic blow, but the two main candidates look as if they will generate enough material to sustain the company's "Unconventional Wisdom" show, devoted to the absurdities of the political olympics.

A recent performance by the company at its theater at 351 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side included a freewheeling Bush-Clinton debate, followed by questions from the audience. "Governor Clinton," one audience member asked, "are you still against the draft?" The answer: "No, I changed my position ever since women have been allowed to engage in active combat."

In a political version of "Jeopardy," the answer to the clue "House of Representatives" was: "What's only slightly smarter than the House of Pancakes?" Defining a Good Routine

"In general, a good stand-up routine is 8 on a scale of 10," said Carl Kissin, a resident member, who was interviewed recently after a company workshop. "We'll have 5's and 4's and 3's, but also a lot more 10's."

Behind the 10's lie a specific set of skills and techniques, which the six resident members of Chicago City Limits teach at workshops throughout the week. Some classes are restricted to members of its touring company, while others are open to the public. About 40 percent of the students in the open classes are theatrical actors hoping to develop a greater sense of freedom on the stage, but nearly as many are people in the advertising industry who want to improve their presentations to clients. They have a tough row to hoe. "Someone once described improv as driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror," said Paul Zuckerman, the company's director. No Script, Just Suggestions

Seventeen students recently gathered in a studio on West 72d Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to take an advanced class from Judith Searcy, a resident cast member. (In addition to Mr. Kissin, the other members of the company are John C. Telfer, Wendy Chatman, Rick Simpson, Carole Bugge and the company's musical director, Gary Adler.) The workout was grueling. First came an exercise called Emotional Circle, in which each student was required to communicate, with maximum intensity, an emotion that was particularly difficult. The fictional situations, determined by Ms. Searcy, were such commonplace ones as trying to persuade a reluctant teller to cash a check.

"When you're acting, you have a script," Ms. Searcy warned. "In improv, you have suggestions, and it's like the audience is your script."

Some scenes sputtered and died, but others took off. In one scene, a student played the bored pilot of a downed airliner, stranded on a desert island with her flight attendant, a young man named Dylan, who was instructed to act guilty.

Pilot: "So, Dylan, why don't you look around for some provisions while I smoke a cigarette?"

Dylan (dazed and babbling): "I need to get a Coke to Row 6C."

Pilot (yawning): "Dylan, 6C is gone, as is the rest of the airplane."

Dylan (a horrible realization dawning): "Uh, Captain, do you think it's possible for a plane to crash if someone, like, accidentally turns off the rear engines?"

Pilot (after fixing Dylan with a long, steady gaze): "Dylan, I don't think you have a big future in flight attendance." Evolution of an Idea

Ideally, a well-turned bit of improvisation will take a random suggestion, fold it into the comic premise or the relationship unfolding onstage and, as Ms. Searcy repeated again and again, "justify it."

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Improvisational theater evolved in the 1930's at Hull House in Chicago as a way to coax teen-agers into acting. The idea was to take the intimidating sense of structured performance out of the experience. The Hull House method, developed by Viola Spolin, was adopted by her son, Paul Sills, who in 1956 founded the Compass Players, an incubator for such talents as Mike Nichols, Elaine May and Shelley Berman.

Three years later, the Compass Players folded and gave rise to Second City, in which Alan Arkin and Barbara Harris started. Second City then gave rise to similar troupes in other cities, notably the Committee in San Francisco, the Proposition in Boston and the Premise in New York. In the mid-1970's, Second City's branch in Toronto became the home base for a slew of comic talents, including Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, and the actors of SCTV.

Mr. Zuckerman came to improvisation in the mid-1970's from the advertising business. Like many of the students who take classes from Chicago City Limits, he wanted to sharpen his ability to pitch an idea to clients. He wound up studying with Second City, and then joined forces with George Todisco, a Second City alumnus, who founded Chicago City Limits in 1977. In 1979, the company went on a national tour that ended in New York City, and the company never left. When Mr. Todisco died in 1982, Mr. Zuckerman took over as director and found a permanent home for the company at the theater on the Upper East Side.

Today, Chicago City Limits performs 52 weeks a year, and it sends a touring company across the country. This fall, as part of its educational program, it will offer 10 workshops. It also appears at corporate gatherings, known as industrials. A Little Laugh, a Little Tune

The political show, a first for the company, moves back and forth between set pieces and improvisational sketches.

It includes an election appeal, sung plaintively by Mr. Kissin, playing President Bush, to the tune of "Try to Remember": Try to remember the Kuwait surrender

Political humor presents both opportunities and pitfalls. "There are so many sound bites out there that you can end up just repeating them, and not commenting on them," said Mr. Telfer, echoing Mr. Zuckerman's cardinal rule, If you're not saying something smart, you're saying something dumb.

Mr. Kissin said, "I don't just want to get up there and repeat the popular view for an easy laugh."

That would be a betrayal of the form, which is built on doing things the hard way, and delivering the unexpected on instant demand.

"There are some far-out stand-ups, like Steven Wright, but in general they take things already in society," said Mr. Kissin. "We can develop ideas that have never been there,"

Mr. Telfer nodded in agreement. "I've always thought of it as like watching a pleasant car crash," he said.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 1992, on Page C00017 of the National edition with the headline: Comedy Troupe Makes It Up As It Goes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe